Craft stores are really a place to explore. Hobby Lobby, Michaels and even Joann fabrics. There are many tools and items that can found in jewelry crafting, paper crafting and even fabric areas. Everything from cutting mats, storage, and even scenic pieces. I have used elastic for hose bed on fire trucks, and jewelry wire for necklaces for telephone wires.
I've found great success using washer fluid to thin acrylic paints. It helped me salvage a painting project that was initially failing, and the results were outstanding.
I’ve saved prescription plastic containers with lids for storing smaller items. They have screw on lids that can be screwed on two ways so that one way gives you a small cup to hold the pieces you want to use while still securing the rest in the bottle.
Man this is so cool. I saved up and just got the reading T1 from Broadway Jimmy and I've been oodling at it for a few weeks now. 4-8-4 northerns just look so good. But i got #2101 because I do like the black. This is super helpful! Thanks for being the cornerstone of the model railroad community!!! We love you Jimmy!
Another place I have found things for my hobby work is Sally's Beauty Supply. They are not "Dollar Store" cheap but are not too bad on price. They have some relatively inexpensive squeeze bottles (very fine tip) and some nice spray bottles that produce a very fine mist (for wet water or scenic cement solutions). They also have a wide selection of emery boards/nail files/sanding sticks.
Grated cheese shakers, like parmesan or romano, make good ground foam containers, especially when you make custom blends yourself. Handy for both storing and applying by using the grated shaker part of the lids. Plastic peanut butter jars are also great for this and for storing ballast. Basically, these two are great for any scenery items that come in little bags, like Woodland Scenics stuff.
My trip yesterday to the Dollar Tree yielded cheap aerosol cooking spray for use as a release agent for plaster rock molds, aerosol hair spray for when I make sedum trees, and a cheap child’s necklace with fine enough chain for the water spout on the water tower I’m building and enough left over for chaining flat car loads. Princess Auto had a whole tub of long handled cotton swabs in different sizes. Once I use the swabs the wooden handles make great poles or lumber loads.
Last Christmas my wife and I got many of our mini pre flocked model trees for our Christmas village layout from the dollar section at Target of all places. I just need to glue several of them down better over the summer, but they work really well for me. It helps as well having the wire core so they stick into foam board a lot easier
Hey if you go to tractor supply there's these little kits that include a tractor, trailer, two ho/OO scale figures, 4 fence panels and two livestock. Its ONLY $20
I made a wire fence using cut pieces if dowel and craft wire from the dollar store. Just Dremel drilled 3 holes in the cut pegs, threaded the wire through and knotted it at the end.
For keeping track of small parts, I use a fishing tackle box with moveable dividers. (I get them from Wal-Mart because it is convenient.) I can make storage areas small for little items or bigger for lots of parts or longer parts. Plus they lock when closed helping to pieces from going every where when it falls off the work surface.
Not a Dollar store find, but - if you know someone who works as a casheer, ask them for the cardboard tubes from the centre of till rolls. They're going to throw them away regardless. These can be used in a variety of ways, including representing silos, as they are much smaller than toilet roll tubes and so are more useful for N Gauge.
I have been using washer fluid for years with great results. I have not noticed any color change in the paint. I also add color to my paint so its not what comes out of the bottle. I will add a small amount of gray or tan to white, gray or green to black as examples.
If you have a dog, or neighbors or friends who do, the dogs seem to really like stuffed duck dog toys -- like to tear the stuffing out of the ducks, that is. That stuffing makes very realistic clouds. I just pull the stuffing apart and stick it on my sky blue walls, using double stick tape. The dog here still likes to play with what is left of the ducks, and I have lots of free clouds.
I found some 18" wall shelves at my local dollar tree that make excellent work places to mount on the facia. They are 4" deep and have a lip that will keep things from rolling off. They make great simple desks for crews to use to hold car cards and whatnot. Easy to install and they look good!
Ear/Eye Droppers from the pharmacy. I use them to apply glue to ballast - I find them easier to control than syringes. And best of all they're usually free!
I cracked an Atlas N Scale Dash 8-40BW frame while milling it. I couldn't find a replacement online. I even searched for old Dash 8s but the cheapest was $75. I bought an epoxy called KwikWeld by J-B Weld that I had to wait 24 hours to fully solidify. It worked! So those epoxies do come in handy. I paid something like $8 though not the super low price you paid at that dollar store. I do visit my dollar store to pickup a lot of very inexpensive things that come in handy.
Harbor Freight - cheap drill bit/taps, razor knifes/blades, also the clear plastic organizers - like $5/ea, use for train parts, spare model parts etc. Also have nice compartmented tool boxes for hobby tools.
The Super Wood Glue is great. I use it more than Gorilla Glue 2. Washer fluid is also very good for cleaning airbrush’s and regular paint brushes. There is a TH-cam video on different recipes for thinning and cleaner for airbrush. They do work very good.
Thinking of airbrushing... a lot of folks will paint the back of plastic spoons to check out thinning, coverage, shade, etc. So getting a bulk back of teaspoons seems to be a good idea.
No dollar store or poundland where I live but the china shops offer similar useful items at great prices. It is always useful to see what other people use for storage and modeling. Thanks buddy. 🇵🇹
The toy section can come in handy for things like plastic figures and animals, useful for making loads for stock cars or populating a country scene. Dollar Tree has little half-buildings that would be good for backdrops to save on space, have a fire station one I mounted a working billboard to the roof, hid the electronic guts in the back and parked a Hot Wheels fire engine out front.
I found a person using an airbrush to spray orange paint in an HO loco. He used washer fluid, ipa, glycerin, and water in his mix. I’ve actually tried this with a purple washer fluid. It looks like a sports drink so you need to label it very well. I haven’t used anything besides Tamiya paint and ipa to thin it like Boomer, but I did try apple barrel paint in my airbrush with the vivid purple mixture I just described and it worked well enough. Then I put straight 91% ipa through it after, the airbrush.
Hi. I am from Aus, so we have discount stores, rather than dollar stores, but the same idea in many ways. At my local discount store, last week I bought a model tree that is good for n scale or ho scale. I have also bought flock and ground scatter as well Also I have bought tacky glue and acrylic modelling gel. At our local big box hardware store I buy balsa wood (well pawlonia another easy-to-work hardwood).
My local Dollarama has decorative fine gravel in many colors. I use it for ballast on my n sczle layout it costs $4.00 a jar thats half the size of a woodland scenics bottle. I use a coffee grinder to make it finer when need be.
We have a dollar store up in Canada called dollarama. Which is currently $5 or less. But I have found many great model rail roaring supplies and tools in there. And some even recently started carrying a roughly ho scale train and a small loop of train that’s battery powered
Love the clear parts bottles and applicator bottles. The latter would be useful for mixing paint colors for your airbrush. I rescued 2 carousel (sic?) units from the kitchen spice shelf. The clear bottle storage will work great making it easier to find that tiny thing that I know I have.....but where did I put that??
Jimmy, If you are going to the Firetruck day at Spencer, please stop by at the N scale layout in warehouse 3. I would love to talk to you. Thanks……keep it up!
Not necessarily a dollar store tip, but I found myself looking around for a cheap source of cinder ballast. ground up charcoal briquettes fit the bill. (I'm sure some dollar stores may have charcoal briquettes.)
Walgreens has 91% alcohol. It's +1.50 more for the 32oz size vs. 70%. Also listed but not avail at my store now is 16oz plus buy one get another 50% off.
Jimmy, just got my first and last ever order from scale trees, some of the worst looking trees I have ever seen. and their smallest is way too large for n scale. you need to get rid of them.
Be careful with that windshield fluid. Sometimes it contains nasty stuf that might destroy parts of your airbrush that are not metal. Just read what the windshield fluid contains and make sure none of those things will attack rubber or plastic ;).
A little tip you can pass on to your Australian followers: I got lots of little knick knacks for model railroading from... Cheap As Chips and The Reject Shop. Cheap As Chips Warehouses are great places to find arts and crafts stuff cheap, including small containers, acrylic paints, foam and paintbrushes, cable ties for tying up things like wires and stuff like that. Even got containers of Mod Podge (which comes in handy for modeling rushing water bodies) and a nice little but noisy air pump - the air pump was originally designed for pumping air into car tyres and children's sports balls but works beautifully with air paint brushing. The Reject Shop is perfect to find clothes pins, acrylic paints, glue containers, etc. Both of these even sell storage solutions like cabinets and storage tubs of varying sizes.
i started checking them, but a lot of the tips are for amateurs and will bite you back! even here. if you want to glue something on your railroad you use CA glue. Put a drop of CA glue on the base, then come with the CA glue hardener spray and it will glue instantly...why wait?
Craft stores are really a place to explore. Hobby Lobby, Michaels and even Joann fabrics. There are many tools and items that can found in jewelry crafting, paper crafting and even fabric areas. Everything from cutting mats, storage, and even scenic pieces. I have used elastic for hose bed on fire trucks, and jewelry wire for necklaces for telephone wires.
I've found great success using washer fluid to thin acrylic paints. It helped me salvage a painting project that was initially failing, and the results were outstanding.
Crazy seeing you here! Love your videos.
I’ve saved prescription plastic containers with lids for storing smaller items. They have screw on lids that can be screwed on two ways so that one way gives you a small cup to hold the pieces you want to use while still securing the rest in the bottle.
Here's a tip not cheap but life changing. Spray foam can and straw can be cleaned with carburetor cleaner. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for the tip.
Man this is so cool. I saved up and just got the reading T1 from Broadway Jimmy and I've been oodling at it for a few weeks now. 4-8-4 northerns just look so good. But i got #2101 because I do like the black. This is super helpful! Thanks for being the cornerstone of the model railroad community!!! We love you Jimmy!
I appreciated the first "Dollar Store Finds" video you did, and found the paint brush rack you mentioned. Thanks for doing another!
epoxy has a shelf life of 6 months , so mix a little bit together and check if it sets up in 5 minutes. When it gets to old it won't set up at all.
Another place I have found things for my hobby work is Sally's Beauty Supply. They are not "Dollar Store" cheap but are not too bad on price. They have some relatively inexpensive squeeze bottles (very fine tip) and some nice spray bottles that produce a very fine mist (for wet water or scenic cement solutions). They also have a wide selection of emery boards/nail files/sanding sticks.
I use the small floral foam to hold painted line poles and fence as they dry from paint or glue
Grated cheese shakers, like parmesan or romano, make good ground foam containers, especially when you make custom blends yourself. Handy for both storing and applying by using the grated shaker part of the lids. Plastic peanut butter jars are also great for this and for storing ballast. Basically, these two are great for any scenery items that come in little bags, like Woodland Scenics stuff.
My trip yesterday to the Dollar Tree yielded cheap aerosol cooking spray for use as a release agent for plaster rock molds, aerosol hair spray for when I make sedum trees, and a cheap child’s necklace with fine enough chain for the water spout on the water tower I’m building and enough left over for chaining flat car loads. Princess Auto had a whole tub of long handled cotton swabs in different sizes. Once I use the swabs the wooden handles make great poles or lumber loads.
Love this idea especially being brand new to the hobby thanks for sharing
Last Christmas my wife and I got many of our mini pre flocked model trees for our Christmas village layout from the dollar section at Target of all places. I just need to glue several of them down better over the summer, but they work really well for me. It helps as well having the wire core so they stick into foam board a lot easier
I use washer fluid to thin acrylic paints with airbrush as well as craft paints with no.problem brushing as well. Hal
Hey if you go to tractor supply there's these little kits that include a tractor, trailer, two ho/OO scale figures, 4 fence panels and two livestock. Its ONLY $20
I made a wire fence using cut pieces if dowel and craft wire from the dollar store. Just Dremel drilled 3 holes in the cut pegs, threaded the wire through and knotted it at the end.
For keeping track of small parts, I use a fishing tackle box with moveable dividers. (I get them from Wal-Mart because it is convenient.) I can make storage areas small for little items or bigger for lots of parts or longer parts. Plus they lock when closed helping to pieces from going every where when it falls off the work surface.
Not a Dollar store find, but - if you know someone who works as a casheer, ask them for the cardboard tubes from the centre of till rolls. They're going to throw them away regardless. These can be used in a variety of ways, including representing silos, as they are much smaller than toilet roll tubes and so are more useful for N Gauge.
I have been using washer fluid for years with great results. I have not noticed any color change in the paint. I also add color to my paint so its not what comes out of the bottle. I will add a small amount of gray or tan to white, gray or green to black as examples.
If you have a dog, or neighbors or friends who do, the dogs seem to really like stuffed duck dog toys -- like to tear the stuffing out of the ducks, that is. That stuffing makes very realistic clouds. I just pull the stuffing apart and stick it on my sky blue walls, using double stick tape. The dog here still likes to play with what is left of the ducks, and I have lots of free clouds.
I use their wood pieces, paints, glues, clamps. They carry both HO and n scale vehicles. They have craft boards to work on.
I found some 18" wall shelves at my local dollar tree that make excellent work places to mount on the facia. They are 4" deep and have a lip that will keep things from rolling off. They make great simple desks for crews to use to hold car cards and whatnot. Easy to install and they look good!
Ear/Eye Droppers from the pharmacy. I use them to apply glue to ballast - I find them easier to control than syringes. And best of all they're usually free!
Try Joanne's fabrick for tree material. Big bags of lichen and such. Great for making trees.
I cracked an Atlas N Scale Dash 8-40BW frame while milling it. I couldn't find a replacement online. I even searched for old Dash 8s but the cheapest was $75. I bought an epoxy called KwikWeld by J-B Weld that I had to wait 24 hours to fully solidify. It worked! So those epoxies do come in handy. I paid something like $8 though not the super low price you paid at that dollar store. I do visit my dollar store to pickup a lot of very inexpensive things that come in handy.
Harbor Freight - cheap drill bit/taps, razor knifes/blades, also the clear plastic organizers - like $5/ea, use for train parts, spare model parts etc. Also have nice compartmented tool boxes for hobby tools.
The Super Wood Glue is great. I use it more than Gorilla Glue 2. Washer fluid is also very good for cleaning airbrush’s and regular paint brushes. There is a TH-cam video on different recipes for thinning and cleaner for airbrush. They do work very good.
Thinking of airbrushing... a lot of folks will paint the back of plastic spoons to check out thinning, coverage, shade, etc. So getting a bulk back of teaspoons seems to be a good idea.
No dollar store or poundland where I live but the china shops offer similar useful items at great prices. It is always useful to see what other people use for storage and modeling. Thanks buddy. 🇵🇹
The toy section can come in handy for things like plastic figures and animals, useful for making loads for stock cars or populating a country scene.
Dollar Tree has little half-buildings that would be good for backdrops to save on space, have a fire station one I mounted a working billboard to the roof, hid the electronic guts in the back and parked a Hot Wheels fire engine out front.
I found a person using an airbrush to spray orange paint in an HO loco. He used washer fluid, ipa, glycerin, and water in his mix. I’ve actually tried this with a purple washer fluid. It looks like a sports drink so you need to label it very well. I haven’t used anything besides Tamiya paint and ipa to thin it like Boomer, but I did try apple barrel paint in my airbrush with the vivid purple mixture I just described and it worked well enough. Then I put straight 91% ipa through it after, the airbrush.
You can never have enough q tips!
Hi. I am from Aus, so we have discount stores, rather than dollar stores, but the same idea in many ways. At my local discount store, last week I bought a model tree that is good for n scale or ho scale. I have also bought flock and ground scatter as well Also I have bought tacky glue and acrylic modelling gel. At our local big box hardware store I buy balsa wood (well pawlonia another easy-to-work hardwood).
I found 6qt storage bins w/ top. Not airtight, but great for keeping all the parts of a project together when not working on it.
I have used washer fluid to thin paint for years without any issues.
My local Dollarama has decorative fine gravel in many colors. I use it for ballast on my n sczle layout it costs $4.00 a jar thats half the size of a woodland scenics bottle. I use a coffee grinder to make it finer when need be.
We have a dollar store up in Canada called dollarama. Which is currently $5 or less. But I have found many great model rail roaring supplies and tools in there. And some even recently started carrying a roughly ho scale train and a small loop of train that’s battery powered
In target you can find driven pocket series trucks that are close to n scale
Love the clear parts bottles and applicator bottles. The latter would be useful for mixing paint colors for your airbrush. I rescued 2 carousel (sic?) units from the kitchen spice shelf. The clear bottle storage will work great making it easier to find that tiny thing that I know I have.....but where did I put that??
I use old medicine bottles for storage of paint, IPA, couplers, and just about anything.
Jimmy, If you are going to the Firetruck day at Spencer, please stop by at the N scale layout in warehouse 3. I would love to talk to you. Thanks……keep it up!
Wow! Cool, thanks for awesome advice 👍🏻
I found Clear streak free windex at my dollar store 😁👍
Not necessarily a dollar store tip, but I found myself looking around for a cheap source of cinder ballast. ground up charcoal briquettes fit the bill. (I'm sure some dollar stores may have charcoal briquettes.)
I've bought from 'trains in the valley' before. They have videos on TH-cam.
I know the local Dollar Tree has Reen Deer Moss; I not brought any because I am not ready to model any trees right now.
Walgreens has 91% alcohol. It's +1.50 more for the 32oz size vs. 70%. Also listed but not avail at my store now is 16oz plus buy one get another 50% off.
Great tips. Thanks.
they a
have a small cutting pad i have several
Target has 90% RA for $3.99 for 32oz.
Walmart carries 90% IPA!
How about all those snacks for a buck 25 for when u got hungry
Jimmy, just got my first and last ever order from scale trees, some of the worst looking trees I have ever seen. and their smallest is way too large for n scale. you need to get rid of them.
Amazon has 99.9% alcohol !
It's been years, but I think I bought 91% from Walmart.
i buy their craft paint
Washer fluid is used for cleaning air brush not thinner
Be careful with that windshield fluid. Sometimes it contains nasty stuf that might destroy parts of your airbrush that are not metal. Just read what the windshield fluid contains and make sure none of those things will attack rubber or plastic ;).
A little tip you can pass on to your Australian followers: I got lots of little knick knacks for model railroading from... Cheap As Chips and The Reject Shop.
Cheap As Chips Warehouses are great places to find arts and crafts stuff cheap, including small containers, acrylic paints, foam and paintbrushes, cable ties for tying up things like wires and stuff like that. Even got containers of Mod Podge (which comes in handy for modeling rushing water bodies) and a nice little but noisy air pump - the air pump was originally designed for pumping air into car tyres and children's sports balls but works beautifully with air paint brushing.
The Reject Shop is perfect to find clothes pins, acrylic paints, glue containers, etc.
Both of these even sell storage solutions like cabinets and storage tubs of varying sizes.
I purchased 99% IPA from Amazon. $35 for a gallon.
i started checking them, but a lot of the tips are for amateurs and will bite you back! even here. if you want to glue something on your railroad you use CA glue. Put a drop of CA glue on the base, then come with the CA glue hardener spray and it will glue instantly...why wait?